6 months post surgery and still have numbness
Hi everyone, I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right wrist on April 4th and on my left wrist April 18th. My surgen performed the WALANT method which I was very pleased with. I still have mild numbness, especially when sleeping, even though I do wear a splint. Is it normal to still feel some numbness after this long? I have seen the surgeon about a month ago and he said my finger dexterity, strength, etc are all good so that this is just taking time. Is this correct? Thank you all for any input. Gary W
Thank you for the reply. It was not bad before surgery....just an annoying numbness when first waking up. It is now 5.5 months post surgery and still numbness in palm
Unfortunately the only accurate way to judge how bad it was is to see the pre-operative nerve condcution studies, if any were done. You can't tell just from the subjective symptom severity, JB
Thank you so much again for your time and replies. I have met with the surgeon 3 weeks ago when I also had a DIP little finger fusion. Regarding the numbness in both hands, 6 months after CT surgery, he said he feels it is just a normal extended healing as I have great dexterity and strength in the hands and fingers. I see him on Oct19th as a 6 week follow up to the finger surgery and will address the CT concern again. He never did any pre-operative nerve conduction studies on either hand....would that be something I should request now or is it really only for pre-surgery. The numbness is quite intense when first waking up, even though I wear a brace when I sleep.
They are very hard to interpret after surgery if you didn't do a set of tests before surgery. Something which very few surgeons understand unfortunately, though we are working on educating them:-) JB
It rather depends how bad it was before surgery, the worst cases never recover fully and even grade 4/5 cases can take up to about 2 years to regain normal sensation if they do recover. JB